Eagles and Swans
Chapter 23: Green with Spite, Red with Rage
Ruthenia stared after the Arcane diarchs as they departed. “Now?” she said.
“Give them one dance together,” Aleigh replied, skewering the last of the fish with his fork.
She watched intently as the music swelled, and the partners twirled in synchrony. Aligon, with his grand stature and his glittering cloak, was steady yet showy with every step. His wife glided in her finery, like an albatross over waves. They did not leap; they danced the way only royals did, and a few couples stepped aside just to watch.
As the music entered its flourishing, climatic measures, Ruthenia cast a glance at Aleigh. “Come with me,” she said. “I'll need someone to show me the steps.” He nodded back. They rose together, she with a kick of the chair. “Sorry,” she muttered. Her companion said nothing, only held out his hand, and this time, she took it. Cameras flashed hungrily.
“I hope you have enjoyed your banquet so far,” said Kamaro. “It is our greatest desire that you all enjoy yourselves as is fit for a wedding night. Tonight, we have with us the Astran Royal Orchestra, performing the standard nine piece set. The next is the Old Bel Quadrille!”
Together they crossed the dance floor; the spinning couples with their billowing gowns and tailcoats parted to let them through, like flowers across a pond. Everyone danced in drab blacks and blues and greys, even golds, and out here in her blazing red, she felt as bright as a firework.
There was a lull in the music, as they moved into the view of Aligon and his wife. On noticing their arrival, the two turned, beaming.
“Here at last, are we?” said Aligon. “I dearly hope this lady knows the dance. The quadrille comes next.” He cast her a glittering green glance that made her feel wrong.
“I can learn,” she replied with a glare.
“Why don't you watch for two cycles,” Xenia replied, taking her husband's hand, “and commit it to memory?”
On cue, the instruments stirred. From strings and pipes, and metal bars of glockenspiels, the first bar of a quadruple metre piece unfurled warmly across the hall. With no more than a nod, the Arcane King and Queen took swiftly to the dance.
Ruthenia observed diligently, catching the first step of each bar first. Then the twist and step of feet at each downbeat. Like the music, the steps were even and stately, rhythmic and repetitive. Once she read them as a series of foot positions, they stuck fast.
Then at the eighth bar, there was a whirl of movement across the floor, as women flung their partners across to each other. Aligon and Xenia cast a glance at the pair beside them and, seeing they were not ready, brought their gazes back to each other.
At the passing of the twelfth bar, Ruthenia turned to Aleigh, snatching his left hand with her right. “You lead,” she said.
He nodded, taking her right shoulder. “Left foot back,” he answered, and she gasped and almost tripped when the Arcane Prince stepped forward and she hurried to comply with a backward step, leaping away on one foot.
Their first quadrille cycle was a series of tardy steps, stumbles, and crushed toes. For all those seconds, she clung to Aleigh for her life as she stepped away to make room for him, the marble floor spinning below her. He obliged to steer her into the right positions every time she went wayward. She laughed with fright when he swung her away from him with a toss of the shoulder and she made a frantic three-step turn.
But when the next pair of bars came, she realised she already knew them. The panic loosened its grip on her heart, and she put her left foot behind her right, his feet following hers. The pounding of her heart was drowned out by the trembling swell of lutes. By the third cycle, it was as if she had known the dance before she had come here.
“You really do have an excellent memory,” said her dance partner, eyes glinting with amusement. “Are you ready to meet my brother?”
“It has to happen at some point,” she replied with an earnest nod.
He slackened his grip in preparation for the trade, and cast a glance to his right and to his left.
Then she released his left hand, and the next dancer down whirled into his hands at the very same moment that she flew into Aligon's. With no more than a shiver, Ruthenia took the Arcane King’s hand, and he reached out to grasp her shoulder. They rejoined the dance, she doing her best with her newly acquired muscle memory.
When her eyes met King Aligon’s, she could almost feel the world whirling. Studying his face, she found he looked a little like Aleigh, except he was older and stockier, and his hair was short, the same blond hanging in curls on his brow. He wore the grandeur like a mantle—so comfortable within it, it made him seem impossibly tall. She busied herself with dancing, and Aligon obliged, moving her with far more force than Aleigh had.
“Good evening, Your Majesty,” she managed to say. “I’m sorry about eavesdropping just now.”
“Oh, don’t you worry,” he replied with a smile she could not decode. “I like a woman with a mind of her own. Ruthenia Fulminare Cendina.”
Fear sprawled through her chest like tendrils. She fought to stay in beat, taking the next set of steps before speaking. “You know me?” she replied.
“Why, yes,” said Aligon. “My brother’s business is mine as well, as far as it concerns a public event we are attending together, so I took the liberty to conduct some background research. And I must say, what an interesting choice of a partner! That is, if it were true he chose you.” There it was again, that dangerous glint. “But you were not chosen, were you?”
She spent a moment trying to regain her footing. “He owed me, for saving your mother,” she answered, but her heart was booming in her ears again.
“Ah, Little Brother, always so eager to please Mum and Dad.”
Ruthenia felt a sickness in her stomach, as if she had just watched a predator behead its prey. “She's your mother, too,” she said, as impassively as she could.
As this cycle of the quadrille came to a close, Aligon slowed to a pause, studying her calmly. Then his grip shifted from her hand to her arm. “Do you drink, Miss Cendina?” he said, stepping out of the dance, steering her firmly away with himself.
“I don’t,” she said, but it was clear that wouldn't stop him. She wrenched her fingers out of his grip, and followed the Arcane King towards the head of the hall.
They passed dancers in pink and gold, some staring confused at the pair. Occasionally they bowed to Aligon, but he only smiled curtly as they passed.
Passing the wine table, the king picked up a filled glass, gesturing for her to follow suit. She shook her head, watching as camera flashes lit the liquid inside the glasses blood-red.
“So, Miss Cendina,” he said, after a swirl and a sip. “What is it you wish to say to me?”
She frowned. “Why should you think I have anything to say?”
“I do not think the daughter of Lita Kyril would enter the palace with no purpose.” She felt her body go numb as a smile curved his lips.
Still, Ruthenia pressed on. “Then you would know that Titanio Calied is my boss,” she finally said. “He sent you one of his inventions recently. And I am here to make a request—that you to give it due consideration. It’s the only way you can prove it’s Lilin.”
Aligon laughed. “Oh, I'm certain Mister Calied knew that when he sent it,” he replied, sipping his red wine, smiling over the glass. “There is indeed no alternative that doesn't involve revoking one of our previous decrees. But you must understand, Miss Cendina…” And now his voice grew piteous. “If you paid any attention to the political tenor, you would know I have no appetite for bold policy moves. But that's not to say your employer's marvellous invention is useless—no, far from it…”
Ruthenia suddenly understood, in a blinding flash of clarity, what he was truly saying beneath these words. He would take the camera and use it, in secret if he had to, and whatever became of Tanio was whatever was most politically expedient. And he would steer the apparatus of the press, as he always did, to tell the story the way he saw it.
Cameras flashed. Bells glinted. She could tell from his grin that he liked toying with his prey. And there was only one way to rebalance this conversation: she raised her voice.
“I understand now,” she growled. “You see people as a means to an end.”
“No, Miss Cendina, I am merely being considered,” Aligon replied, his voice low. “Let me teach you something your parents never did. It isn't vision that matters, but popular support. I could be the cleverest diarch the world has seen, and I could make sweeping plans that would elevate Astra into a modern utopia by next year. But if, in the course of enacting them, I tore up my people's trust, then my head would be on a plate within a month. And then, my vision would become no more than a joke, shared around at dinner parties.”
“And how many citizens will you butcher just to save your own head?”
She went stiff when the man took her by the shoulder. “Ruthenia, Ruthenia, cool your head now,” he said with a stomach-twisting smile. “You are too much like your mother. Diplomacy is a game of strategy. And you clearly have none.”
White-hot anger wrenched her from inside, blinding her. She was nothing but pure hatred, six years of pent-up hatred. For this man. For his smile. For the silvery voice with which he had spoken her parents' names, had lied his way to power. She hated every gem on his cloak, every mark on his ledger. “A game! A game of lies, maybe! All our lives, our deaths, all pieces on your pathetic little board!” And she yanked the wineglass out of his hands, and flung its contents at his face.
Ignited by a lightning-flash of cameras, the red liquid met his shut eyes in a bloody splash, and rolled down his cheeks, dripping from the tip of his nose and his chin to soak the front of his robe.
Blinking his eyes open, Aligon raised a wine-stained eyebrow. Around her, Ruthenia saw guards leap over the barricade, and she froze and trembled, swinging wildly between the urge to scream and to flee. But the Arcane King only lifted his hand to halt his guards. He waved them away, and reached into his pocket for a napkin, saying nothing while he dabbed his face dry.
Shaking, Ruthenia set the incriminating glass down on the table. The gathering around them was frozen into a tableau, though the music continued undisturbed. The cameras kept flashing. Her heart boomed.
For seconds, they were, indeed, both pieces on a board—red and red, alike in hatred.
The Arcane King began to grin. “You certainly know how to make an impression!” he declared. His grin turned to laughter. It was a laughter that made her feel like running away. “You ought to be thankful that I have a generous sense of humour! Aleigh would most definitely have set the guards upon you.”
She did not return the laughter. “You know nothing about him,” she replied. "He is a better person than you'll ever be."
Aligon went silent, lifting and eyebrow. He reached for another drink, and this time downed the glass in a single gulp. “Shall we return, then?” His voice was dangerously kindly. “I’m sure that that half-dance did not satisfy you.”
*
When Ruthenia returned to the floor, Aleigh was covering his face with both hands. “Ten minutes,” he muttered through his fingers. “It only took you ten minutes to waste an evening's pleasantries.”
“I'm sorry. He just—he started grandstanding about politics being a game. And then he mocked my parents.” She heaved a sigh. “And it flipped my switch. It always does.”
He shook his head. “If you got that far, then you must have gotten deeper under his skin than I expected. So…well done?” He shook his head. “Still, disastrous, by any measure. But I can't deny the satisfaction of seeing someone stand up to him.”
She fought down pangs of remorse. “I'm sorry. I need to take my mind off of it. Do you want to keep dancing?”
He glanced up at the orchestra, who sat flipping their pages. “Well, we haven't much else to do now.”
While the music returned, the caterers carted out the first course of desserts: donuts. This was just as well, for the Arcane King and Queen immediately lost interest and returned to the table. A slow dance was the next on the set—the Reverie, according to Kamaro—and the steps were so simple that Ruthenia did not need to devote any thought to them. Then she muttered, “this is more boring than I thought,” and they broke from the rhythm and pulled into the shade of a balcony, where the press were thinning out for the night.
Watching the party from the margins, Ruthenia was overcome by a curious mix of awe and sorrow—a premonition of years to come when she would reminisce on this one strange night, every scene burned into her mind.
“Whatever tonight’s outcome...I did enjoy being here,” she said amid a tinkling of lutes. “Thank you for inviting me.”
“All else notwithstanding, you have been good company,” her companion replied.
“I just…hope I didn't completely blow it for Tanio. I mean, Aligon did say that the camera was pretty much their only option. But…” She heaved a sigh, shoulders sagging. “What if they do jail him? Oh…you were so right. I'm not good at this diplomacy stuff.”
“No, don't call your motion defeated yet,” he murmured. “Aligon is whimsical at the strangest of times. And he seemed to take your gesture as a joke. And I'm sure that is how he would like it represented.”
“He did say something about his sense of humour.”
“He always did take pleasure in his jokes,” he said, eyes lifting to the stage. “You know, when I was a child, and he a teenager, he would often tell me upsetting lies for his own amusement. As he said, he sees everything as a game.”
“A game of lives and deaths.”
Aleigh nodded. “And votes and laws.”
From the bustling silence rose a soft rumble of drums. Ruthenia lifted her head; her companion's gaze followed her to the stage. “The Helika Waltz,” he said. “They always save it for last.”
“Oh, the only one I learned!” she exclaimed. “At least all that work I put in won't be for nothing.”
Together, they stepped back out from under the balcony. As the first rousing measure of drumbeats declared the beginning of the Helika Waltz, they found a spot on the marble floor, close to the stage, where the music was so close it flooded out their senses.
As they linked hands, Ruthenia laughed. “Sorry to say, but you're going to have to lead this one as well.”
“Happy to oblige,” Aleigh answered through the pulsing hum of the strings, taking her left shoulder. “Have you heard the story of the Helika Waltz?”
“Hollia told me when she was teaching me, it’s the rhythm of Ihir's heartbeat,” Ruthenia said, easing into the beat of the waltz. “I bet Hollia would be having the time of her life if she were here, in my place. Not throwing wine at the Arcane King.”
“She taught you well.” He paused and let go, and she twirled, skirts swirling around her legs. “I assume you don't often attend functions like these?”
“They're not very popular in the New Town, believe it or not,” Ruthenia replied as she flew back into his arms.
Dancing to an orchestra was not like dancing to Ms Kelde's counting. For once, buoyed on a crescendo of strings and horns, she saw the shape of the ocean swell in the pull and push of dancers, heard it in the frenetic tremolo of strings, and all at once she understood what Hollia had meant. Her steps matched the rhythm—the double eighth notes chased by two quarter notes—over and over, round and round, but she moved as she pleased, and Aleigh followed, trading places between other dancers.
At some point she started laughing with the thrill. Her dance partner, perhaps accustomed to such dances, did not look quite so euphoric, but he did smile when she laughed, and she realised she liked to see him smile, if only because the sight was so rare.
But eventually, as they always did, the cymbals entered a shimmering roll, and the strings began to dwindle into a final, gentle repeat of the theme. Applause swelled over the music's final sigh, a polite pattering that resounded through the vaulted hall.
With that, the last note of the Helika Waltz also ended the ceremony. Ruthenia stepped back and let go, feeling a little stupid with the last of her laughter still sitting in her throat. Confusion flooded the joy out as she tried to regain her bearings.
By then, the hall was awake with the buzz of warm conversation as the glittering gathering came to a rippling standstill, the first of them exiting through the lobby and out into the night.
While the room began to empty and other guests drained their drinks, Ruthenia followed Aleigh up the stairs, her heels louder on the marble now that the noise had thinned.
The elevator stood wide for them, the new operator awaiting them with both hands tucked behind her back. Once they were aboard, the prismatic chamber slid quietly away, exiting the roof of the hall. Again, they were themselves immersed in the night, no light to see by but the glow of the neighbouring towers.
“I'll sleep like a log tonight,” Ruthenia whispered, staring out at the palace complex.
“Will you make it home safe?”
She closed her eyes. Water rushed into the dark behind her eyelids. Water and the sound of wings. Lilin. Lilin. “I was literally homeless in the New Town for four years. I'll be fine.”
The lift pulled to a stop at the top of the shaft. Down along the hall, some stragglers tipsily strolled and spun and laughed. There, Ruthenia asked after her umbrella, which the operator brought from the cloakroom and returned with both hands. Grinning to feel its trusty weight in her hand once more, she swung it once round in a circle, then released the catch so it sprung open like a bloom.
“Ihir, I cannot wait to scrub this muck from my face,” she muttered.
“Goodbye, Ruthenia,” replied her companion. “And thank you for your attendance.”
“Thanks for having me over,” she replied, reaching out to pat him on the back, before thinking that that was the wrong gesture for the Arcane Prince. She strung up the umbrella and lifted off without ceremony or regret, only exhaustion and phantom fears of a dance yet to begin.